September 24, 2013

The tattooed arm you see in the photo above belongs to Gone Home designer Steve Gaynor. Further around that arm, you’ll find a second tattoo of a stylised owl, an image that formed part of the logo for Gaynor’s first project as a lead designer, BioShock 2: Minerva’s Den. Steve Gaynor is a man who bleeds for video games.

Five years ago, I wrote about “0451”, a numerical phrase that shows up as a password in the System Shock, Deus Ex and BioShock games. I defined 0451 then as a kind of DNA marker. Each of the games to include the reference had evolved out of a specific design aesthetic: first-person, set in densely interactive and interesting worlds, with a style of play blending action, stealth and exploration. Since that article, the 0451 sphere of influence has expanded: the code has appeared in Dishonored, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, BioShock Infinite, Gone Home, and on human flesh.

When 0451 first appeared in System Shock in 1994, it was as a nod to Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, but there was no obvious meaning to the reference. 0451 gained significance not for how it was originally used, but through its usage – in the games of Origin Systems and Looking Glass Studios, and by designers like Harvey Smith, Warren Spector, Ken Levine and Doug Church. 0451, in each of the games that it appears, represents membership of a broader design philosophy.

Steve Gaynor is of the first generation of game developers to have grown up with, and been influenced by, games like Looking Glass’ System Shock and Thief, and Deus Ex. For a while, his career in the games industry followed in the Looking Glass tradition about as closely as possible. He worked as a level designer on BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite, before leaving triple A game development to found an independent studio, The Fullbright Company, in Portland, OR.

On the face of it, Gone Home - Fullbright's first - couldn’t be less like the games that had inspired Steve Gaynor. Gone Home is decidedly realist, without sci-fi or fantasy elements, and has no combat, no stealth, no enemies, and no puzzles.

And yet Gone Home is an 0451 game, both technically and in spirit. What does that mean, to be an 0451 game? Here's Steve Gaynor.

STEVE GAYNOR: For me, it denotes a dedication to a certain design philosophy, and a certain way of relating to players of your game. It comes from this background of System Shock and Thief and Deus Ex and that lineage of games that on some level, aesthetically, are about being first person games that are very aesthetically immersive and atmospheric and having worlds that are deeply interactive and all that kind of stuff.

But the other side of it is, I feel like all of those games are about trusting the player, in a really meaningful way. Saying we're going to make a world that stands on its own, and that you're a part of, and that you're visiting and interacting with, but that doesn't cater to you, that trusts you to be curious enough and invested enough to navigate it and be interested in it and figure it out and be a part of it because of your inherent interest in exploring that space. And not because of extrinsic rewards or awesome cutscenes or all these things that are made to motivate the player to play the game in this heavy-handed way, but instead are hands off and an invitation for you to invest yourself.

I think it's a really important design philosophy to be represented. I don't think every game should be like that, but I think it's important that there are games like that. They're inspiring to me and I think that they're an important part of what games can do that isn't especially common, but that I think speaks to people, or at least speaks to me, in a way that's totally different than any kind of other entertainment experience or way that a creator can communicate with an audience. And that means a lot to me.

September 17, 2013

I am writing
about events I do not understand. If I had time, I could regulate my thoughts
into a clear and simple account, over the course, perhaps, of several months.
But I have neither the time nor the want to delay any further. My tale will be
shapeless and weird, defying the boundaries of sense, but I choose to write
now, and in great haste, because my memories are as vivid as they will ever be.
I hold these thoughts in my mind’s eye as water is so briefly held between the
fingers. If I shift my attention from this task, I will lose these thoughts
forever.

It is fitting, I
suppose, that I ended up in this state whilst searching for the body of my
editor. It is now, as I give myself over to this strange and shifting narrative,
that I need Alexander the most.

Alexander Yates
had edited my writing since I was seven-teen. He was not a professional editor
– in fact, he was an engineer by trade. Alexander and I grew up together in the
provincial town of Hullport, east of Essex. He encouraged my writing at a time
when I assigned little value to it. This was an ad hoc arrangement, never
formalised, but it worked excellently. He saw what my writing could be – what I
could be – when I could not. When Alexander spoke of the things he believed,
you believed in them, too.

I later moved to
London and begun my literary career in earnest. I made a name for myself as a
writer of essays, largely autobiographical, and of some criticism. Alexander
remained behind in Hullport and concentrated on his engineering work. Still, I
engaged his counsel for all of my writing, though as he grew busier and I was
forced to deal more with literary agents and publishing houses, our partnership
no longer had the easy priority it once enjoyed.

But it was always
Alexander’s voice that I trusted the most. Perhaps because it was the first
voice I ever trusted at all. To write without an editor, without Alexander,
would be… it would be to build a house with faulty wiring. The exterior would
appear sound, but the edges are dangerous, frayed. I would not know myself
whether the words were good or bad. Without Alexander, I write blindly, without
assurances, and I write at length and in desperation, writing and publishing on
and on and on and on for how-ever long it takes for my words to meet with
response and for someone to confirm the words as being true and good.

Recently, I
received a cable in London notifying me that Alexander Yates had died. I later
clarified he was merely presumed dead. Alexander had disappeared in a
mineshaft, the site of one of the many construction projects to which he was
contracted. The authorities called off the search after a month.

I reported to
Hullport for the funeral service. With no body to bury, the local authorities
decided to symbolically fill Alexander’s coffin with the pet turtle from a
local classroom. But the schoolchildren complained, and they had to give the
turtle back. In the end, they buried only an empty casket.

The funeral
service was entirely unworthy of Alexander. Less men attended than I would have
thought proper. The pastor read perfunctorily from Corinthians, and only I
remained at the grave. Clad in my sodden overcoat, I kept a miserable vigil in
the thunderous rain of the after-noon. After I departed, the local teen-agers
congregated at the cemetery to eat ham-burgers and exchange hand-jobs. And I
wondered whether luck smiled on Alexander as it had the turtle. Was his life
spared, too?

Certainly I wished that to be true. I pondered
the question as I walked from the cemetery to the police station, inattentive
to the downpour. The docks, whose industry is the diseased blood that courses
through the clotted veins of this half-a-town, border the industrial
smokestacks of the refineries, which the workers, in their hardhats and their
overalls, leave in dour formation for the pub, where they drown their sorrows
and all else that remains of them. The walls of the pub are viscous – thick and
sticky to the touch from a paint job that never fully healed. It is odd: for as
much as these men drink, I have never seen one fully drunk.

The people of Hullport are a dull lot, sickly
and physically unfortunate. I never understood what Alexander saw in Hullport
and why he devoted so much of his life to these people. They remain firmly in
the last century, I feel, literally shackled by superstition – take, for
example, the tales they tell of the roaming ‘Hullport mudmonster’, a supposed
local cryptid whose body is made of dirty mud. They claim to fear this creature
even as they gleefully propagate its legend. No men of science are these.

As the local constabulary is selected from
this population, I had little faith in the thoroughness of the police
investigation, and the verdict on Alexander’s ‘death’. At the station, I spoke
with the inspector, a portly man with swollen reptilian lips, of the name
Barnes. Barnes had no leads, no information, and was roundly unconcerned about
not having recovered or even located the body from the mine. Alexander had
likely been crushed in a mine collapse, he theorised – or simply asphyxiated, or
fallen or trapped. The mines were deep, he told me, with many dark and
uncharted passageways – nobody even knew where they all led. Or perhaps, he
said, Alexander was eaten alive by some strange creature, e.g. the Hullport
mudmonster.

“Mudmonster!” I exclaimed. “You expect me to
believe that rubbish?”

“The simplest explanation is often times the
correct one,” he insisted, smacking his lips. “Mudmonster’s razor.”

That night, I supped in the Great Room of
Alexander’s mansion, joined by Alexander’s elderly butler Rickards. We sat by
the ornate fireplace in leather armchairs and sniffed at glasses of rare brandy
from Alexander’s private collection. The house was magnificent. It brought me
great comfort to know that Alexander had spent the last years of his life in
great comfort.

Rickards was a thin gent, possessed of stentorian
voice and humourless face. I appreciated his company on that weird night. He
briefed me at length about what Alexander had done with himself in the years
since I left Hullport. Alexander had invested heavily in arterial projects –
roads, bridges, tunnels, and railways – and was responsible perhaps more than
anyone for the upkeep of the town’s infrastructure. He had done quite well for himself
here, and turned his accumulated largesse to some of his individual passions,
like the importation of exotic meats and foreign meats. Alexander would
celebrate his acquisitions of new meats by opening up his mansion for great
feasts, at which all the people of Hullport were welcome to sample said meats.
Despite his carnal appetites, Rickards said, Alexander was a great lover of
animals, and took in abandoned and abused dogs to raise them back to full
health. Rickards may as well have been describing to me a stranger. I realised
then how little I had truly known of Alexander’s life beyond his involvement in
mine.

As I contemplated the implications of this, my
eye drifted across the room where I glimpsed something that chilled me to the
marrow. I saw a pack of tiny, white apparitions flit across the doorway, and
then disappear down the Great Corridor. It happened so quickly it was if I had
caught them dashing between our world and the next.

“By God, Rickards!” I exclaimed, leaping out
of my chair. The brandy snifter crashed on the hardwood floor. “Spectres!”

Rickards shook his head. “Not spectres, sir.
That is the Ghost Club. It is a recreational after-school programme devised and
funded by Mr Yates. It keeps the children off the streets and inside ghost
costumes.”

Then Alexander was a philanthropist, on top of all
else.

I retook my seat. One of Alexander’s black
hounds entered the Great Room and lapped up the spilled brandy.

“When did you last see Alexander?” I petted
the dog on its head. “What did he say to you?”

“The last time I saw Mr Yates…” Rickards
paused to remember. “For some weeks, Mr Yates had been closely involved with
the town’s underground rail line project. He had been commissioned to
reconnoitre the planned site. That was where the mine came in. Every day, Mr
Yates would visit the mine, and soon he began to have troubled nights. When he
slept… when he did sleep, he would
toss and turn, and shout out in the night. He told me he was plagued by dark
visions, images of teeth, and of stars. One night I heard him cry out the
words: ‘Ndyuthr! Ndyuthr!’

“He told me later that it was the mine: that
there was something down there. On the last day I saw him, he left the house in
the morning with one of the hounds and an oil lamp. He said to me, ‘Mr
Rickards, I expect this will be the last we see of one another.’ Indeed, only
the hound returned home that day.”

“Mr Rickards! Why did you not report this
information to the police?”

“I don’t see the relevance.”

“The relevance? Why, Mr Rickards, Alexander
clearly found something quite disturbing in the mine, and told you that he was
walking to his certain death!”

“I don’t see how you could take that from what
I said.”

That night, the after-noon and evening rain
picked up speed and ferocity, and Rickards agreed to have me stay in one of
Alexander’s guest rooms. The electricity in the house had somehow failed, so I
lighted my way with a tinderbox. I lay in bed and became drowsy to the rhythms
of the rain and the wind thrashing against the window. I do not know how long I
had slept – if I had slept at all – by the time I awoke to the shattering of
the window. I saw the curtains throw a hail of wet glass into the room and I
hit the mattress to protect my face. I barely had time to collect myself when
three urgent, pounding knocks arrived at the door.

“Rickards?” I called out. The pounding
continued unabated. “Rickards, is that you?”

Again, I heard no answer but the battering of
the door. Through the broken window, the cold mist slithered down my neck. “Is
this one of the Ghost Club children? I have no fondness for horseplay.” The
pounding turned so violent that the door now buckled under the pressure.

“Rickards?” The wind screamed. “Inspector
Barnes?” This intolerable pounding! I ventured another name.

“Ndyuthr?”

The noises stopped. I laid still a while to
make sure that the presence behind the door had truly disappeared, and once I
was satisfied, I left the bed and pushed the wardrobe quietly to block the
door.

I did not manage to fall asleep that night,
and in the protracted hours I spent lying in the bed, I had much time to
consider Alexander’s premature legacy. The man had built this town, paid for
its roads, kept safe its children, treated its men and women to great banquets,
and saved its animals from death. All for Hullport. And in return? Hullport
wrote him off as dead and intended to bury a turtle in his grave, and even at
that, they failed.

But had I treated my friend any better?

In Alexander’s spare time, of which I am now
surprised he had any, he supported me literally to the hilt – with his time,
with his hospitality, with his friendship, even with his money. And what had I
done with these gifts but glorify myself? I had never compensated Alexander –
not financially, not in any way. I wrote about myself – long essays about my
thoughts, my life, my problems – this is all I wrote about. Of what value was
this? Had I declared myself to be the only subject in the world of any meaning?
What were other people to me but ‘subjects’ of ‘pieces’? What were women to me
but ‘stories’? And what had Alexander been to me but… a means? Had I ever done
a good deed for another as Alexander had done for me? Had I ever done one good
thing for anybody? Had I ever done a single goddamn thing?

There was one thing I could do for Alexander,
which nobody else would. I would go down into that mine. I would find the place
where Alexander lay. If he still lived, then I would save him, and if not,
well, I would give him the memorial he deserved. This I would do: one final,
and perhaps my first, act of friendship.

I set out at first light. I leashed one of
Alexander’s hounds as my guide, and retrieved an oil lamp in the cellar. I
paused at the doorway and said goodbye to Rickards, who was dusting in the
foyer.

“Mr Rickards, I expect this will be the last
we see of one another.”

“See you later, then.”

The road to the mine was long, and took the
hound and I far away from what passes in Hullport for civilisation. On the
trail we passed the ripe corpse of some rotting animal, and the dog peed on it,
and I hated everything about that.

To
my good fortune – so I thought at the time – the entrance to the mine was
unsealed. No matter that it was a crime scene, no matter that Alexander Yates
still waited inside for rescue or internment. I had much to say about the
standard of policing in this wreck of a town and I thought that perhaps when I
returned to London I should write a letter.

In
the mine, the air was warm and thick with dust, and absolutely silent but for
the simmering wind and the whimpering of the dog. The miners’ tools lay where
the miners had abandoned them, scattered over the ground amidst the sawdust and
the rocks. The lights had gone some time ago. I swung the lantern in the
blackness to chart a path, and followed the path of the rails deeper into the
chasm.

As we progressed, the dog’s protests grew in
their fervour. It drove its heels into the ground and held fast as I yanked its
leash onwards. It howled softly. I knelt down beside the pitiable creature and
hung the lantern between us. In the patch of light, the dog turned its soft
eyes up to me and with them begged for clemency. Tears rolled down the side of
its face.

“But this is Alexander,” I explained to the
dog. “We’re trying to find Alexander. We’re trying to save him.”

The dog nuzzled its long snout into the crook
of my arm. I let the leash drop and, perhaps in a display of gratitude, the dog
pressed its wet mouth to my nose. I closed my eyes and listened to the dog’s soft
footsteps recede hurriedly into the daylight.

I proceeded further into the mine, the worn
brass handle of the lantern slippery in the accumulated sweat of my palm. The
mine subdivided into paths and passageways, and each passageway begat more and
more passageways, expanding into a confounding veinal labyrinth. I had no sense
of the size of this maze and no hope of arranging it into a clear pattern in my
mind. I chose passageways without thinking and subjected myself to the guiding
hand of providence. The path sloped down sharply, and I descended carefully
over the uncut rock.

“YOU
WILL NOT FIND WHAT YOU SEEK!”

That voice!

That voice, like the scraping of teeth against
chalkboard!

I clambered back up the incline, dropping the
lantern in my haste. It cascaded down the mine, splaying its beam in a
spasmodic arc across the tunnel walls. I scrambled and ran, from the wind that
snarled at my back, and the voice that drilled into my flesh. I tripped, became
unbalanced, and fell back down the slope as the lantern had moments before. I
dashed my head open on the rocks below.

In retrospect, I am glad for the fall. It
denied my cowardly attempt to flee, and allowed me the chance to comport myself
and meet my death with some dignity. I am dying here, on the dark floor of the
mine, as the blood seeps freely from the gashes that defile my face. Above me,
I can hear its breathing, which is rough and primal, and grows ever louder as
the thing makes its invisible approach. And I can see Alexander, his body
resting against the tree trunk by the shore. Whether he is alive or dead there
I cannot say, but I feel that shortly, I will know.

All that remains is to conclude my story. I
have staved off the end long enough to pen this strange account on the sides of
a mine cart. This took a really long time. I hope that my effort will not be
for naught. I hope that my story will eventually be discovered, and – maybe
even one day – understood.

I hold a conviction now, which had never
before occurred to me. It is this: A good
writer writes to glorify himself, a great writer writes to glorify others.
I am prouder of those words than anything I have ever written. I would like that
to be engraved upon my headstone. Or perhaps, in the spirit of the sentiment, I
should have those engraved on the headstone of somebody else. I am not sure
whose headstone specifically. I think just any headstone will be fine. Anybody
would be thankful to have that.

[Archival
Note, 17/09/13: i’m the assistant archaeologist who had to transcribe this and it
took forever. it's done now though. this guy never wrote his name down anywhere
so I don’t really know who he was. my name is shaun. archaeology is only a day
job for me, i'm in a band, sort of heavy pop-punk, called Midgard Cruising. i
do lead guitar and vox and cowrite all the songs with craig. if yr in hullport
you should come and check us out, we have a couple of shows we’re playing at
the Bard on 24/9, 27/9, 1/10, 5/10, 8/10, 15/10, 22/10 and 25/10. more dates to
come hopefully. we are on facebook and bandcamp also. we are getting some
tshirts and buttons printed and you should be able to buy those at the october
shows, but that depends 100% on our supplier who we found on the web. do NOT
come to the 24/9 and 27/9 shows expecting to buy tshirts and buttons, they will
NOT be there. anyway hope you come out and support the band. white power.]

September 3, 2013

1

Outside the building, a line forms before the plague doctor. He is in full costume, this one: in the brim hat and the nightmarish, long-beaked bird mask, he looms atop the stairs with his arms folded. "Online booking? Online booking?" he asks, in the voice of a teenager. "Do you have the ticket on your phone there... ah, yep, you're alright. Go ahead up there to the right, yeah, straight up there." He moves down the queue, sorting the general from the priority customers and answering everyone’s questions, like whether debit cards are accepted here. (They’re not.)

This is the London Dungeon: a camp medley of historical horrors. The macabre highlights of early modern Britain are rendered here in theme park form. The story of Anne Boleyn’s execution is told through a fun boat ride, and Jack the Ripper himself makes a surprise appearance: with knife, top hat and cape, he twists and thrusts under strobe lighting.

In one historical re-enactment, Guy Fawkes returns as a ghost and successfully follows through on his foiled bomb plot. The wooden floor shakes safely as 'Parliament' is 'blown up'. The London Dungeon offers many such jump scares, all of which simulate the visitor’s violent death. The whole experience culminates in a 'mass hanging', which is a 10-metre plunge in a chunky rollercoaster seat.

There’s something called 'dark tourism' – travel to sites of genocide or destruction on a grand scale, like the Killing Fields of Cambodia or the Chernobyl exclusion zone. This is not that.

"Do you know what my name is?" booms one of the London Dungeon’s live actors, portraying a doctor lurking in a graveyard. "Robin. Robin Graves. Ah… you see what I did there? Robin Graves. That’s what I do!"

He faces an unresponsive crowd. "ROBIN GRAVES!"

At the London Dungeon, history strains through a thick pun fog. An executioner, standing at the gallows, invites a volunteer to come get hanged. "Come on up here and I’ll show you the ropes. Show you the ropes. Ah… you see what I did there?" His voice shrinks to a murmur. "Please laugh."

The lame humour is intentional, and smoothes out the rougher edges of the brutal violence being portrayed until it's family friendly. The Dungeon is, indeed, a popular tourist spot for families with young children.

A middle-aged couple walk through the Dungeon, holding the hands of their young twin daughters.

"Do you know about the Gunpowder Plot?" asks the dad of the daughter whose hand he holds.

"Yes," replies the six-year-old.

"They wanted to blow up the Parliament, which funnily enough is right across the river from where we are. But it's a bit of a joke now, because nobody would want to blow up Parliament today."

She thinks about this. "Why?"

"Well," he says, "because we don't kill people anymore."

2

The actor is blandly handsome. He stands in the stairwell of the bus’s lower deck, microphone in hand, and prepares his square, thirty-something face to mug desperately into a camera. He’ll be broadcast to a closed circuit television upstairs, viewed by the 15 people who are sitting on the upper deck of the dark, funereal bus. The bus has been christened the Necrobus. This is painted on the black exterior in big letters.

"Welcome," he says into the microphone as the bus starts rolling, "to the London Ghost Bus Tour!" He begins speaking in a cartoon villain's voice and sticks with it. "Tonight, for our journey, which should last about an hour and a half, we'll be taking you to sites of horror. Murder. Mystery. Don't worry, there'll also be a couple of... comedy moments."

"My name," he announces, "is Dick Stroker." The reaction from the few passengers upstairs cannot be heard. The actor is alone on the lower deck, save for the driver: a weathered old man sealed off behind a glass window. An illustration on the exterior suggests that a manic skeleton is driving the Necrobus. Not the case. The actual, very human, driver doesn't look like he would find this amusing or has ever found anything to be amusing. He keeps his eyes on the road and says nothing.

After pausing for what could have been laughter, Dick Stroker continues.

"Here we go."

3

This is going to be graphic, he warns.

He’s right. Though he doesn’t go into detail at the beginning, over the course of the two-hour walking tour through Whitechapel, he’ll explain just how Jack the Ripper slaughtered five women, and in precise terms, what he did to their breasts, vaginas and internal organs. The tour guide will proclaim this information to the crowd like a town crier, as little girls listen in the front row and furrow their brows.

This Jack the Ripper walking tour meets every night outside the Tower Hill underground station, as do about a dozen other Jack the Ripper walking tours. Each makes its own claim to authenticity or entertainment value, and grizzled touts lean on fences, smoke cigarettes, chat amongst themselves and point to placards clarifying that this is a cash only deal.

The tour runs through London's East End and stops at several of the Ripper's murder sites. When the convoy leaves Tower Hill for the next destination, late arrivals catch up to the guide at the head of the pack and pay the nine pounds for their tickets.

"I don’t have the exact change," one of those people says to the guide. He is in his late thirties, athletic, and speaks with a Californian accent. A woman walks with him, hands in the pockets of her leather jacket. He extracts a wad of crisp twenty pound notes out of his wallet, explaining by way of apology to the tour guide that he only changed his money at the airport this morning.

"Oh, I might have coins, let me see," his English friend says helpfully. She starts to look through her purse.

It’s not a problem, the tour guide says, and fishes around for change in a Ziploc bag. Finances settled, the man replaces his wallet. The English woman links her arm with his.

"First time in London?" the guide asks casually.

"First day. I just flew in this morning."

"Are you in London for long?"

He looks at the woman on his arm. "Well…" he says, "permanently, actually." She rests her head on his shoulder; long black hair draping down his back. And you can tell that he really means it and that she knows.